In Search of the Mysterious "Grandmother Soley"

Susannah Elizabeth Sowley of Jamaica (1758-1854)

(5 x Great-Grandmother of Jennifer Greet)

This is a story about how Family History can evolve from the faintest of memories and the most trivial of jottings, and how remnants of historic truth can emerge from family legends.

Through family history I was put in touch with a cousin in England, another Jenny. We are both descended from the English born Master Mariner, Captain Horatio Carter Paul (1833-1887) and his wife Gertrude Eliza Thomas, who was born in Jamaica in 1835. Jamaica seemed exotic and interesting to me, so I was keen to find out more about Gertrude's family. We both had access to hand-written family trees of the Paul family which noted Gertrude's mother as Augusta Thomas, daughter of J. Nosworthy [sic] and Susan Soley, and Susan as the daughter of “Grandmother Soley, died aged 104”. No other information. Intriguing!

As access to records and our skills as researchers improved over the years we were able to pin down the J. Nosworthy to Captain Richard Nosworthy, originally from Devon, who went to Jamaica as Paymaster of the 2^nd West India Regiment in 1808. He married Susan in Kingston in August of that year. So who was her mother, the so-called “Grandmother Soley”? And this then also begged the question, who was the significantly unmentioned “Grandfather Soley” - presumably there was one!

Through the discovery of Richard Nosworthy we were now in touch with a lovely young American descendant of his, Katrina, who incited us to greater endeavours. Several other Nosworthy “cousins” from the US and the UK joined our group and we each began adding snippets of information. At the beginning we didn't get very far, but then Jenny in England remembered a great-aunt once mentioning that “Grandmother Soley” and the name Walter Brind seemed to be connected in her memory. Who was Walter Brind? A relative?

Luckily for us, the name Walter Brind can be found on the internet, as a quite famous London silversmith of the 1750s. What connection could he have with a lady in Jamaica? Well, we decided to start from that end, and began researching the family tree of Walter Brind. Many, many names went into our notes but eventually we found a Walter Brind who married a Susan SOWLEY! Sowley/Soley – surely this had to be our connection.

We then followed the Sowley lines but it was many weeks before we able to find the right link between a William Henry Sowley, son of a merchant family in London, and his marriage to Susannah Elizabeth [Somebody] in Jamaica. This was our “Grandmother Soley”. [Just out of interest, the Walter Brind, silversmith of Foster's Lane, turned out to be the great-grandfather of the wife of my 4^th great-uncle, so it was rather a long and tortuous journey! We eventually found that it must have been his son, also Walter Brind, that Grandmother Soley mentioned - he turned out to be her brother-in-law, married to her husband's sister Susannah]

So now we had a name - Susannah Elizabeth Sowley, we think probably born in Jamaica. We have not yet been able to discover her family name, but the hunt continues! Her husband, William Henry Sowley, along with a couple of his brothers, may have been sent to Jamaica in the interests of their London family's mercantile interests. After his marriage to Susannah he appears to have held interests “in right of his wife” to a number of plantations and the slaves that went with them. He was appointed a Collector of Customs probably during the 1790s.

The following are my notes for “Grandmother Soley” (1758-1854) as I have continued to name her on my Family Tree:

We do not know the family name of Susanna Elizabeth (later Sowley). The few bits of information we have about her are very vague, almost in the realms of folk-lore! She is mentioned in some old hand-written family trees as "Grandmother Soley" [sic], famous for living to a great age ("over 100" has been mentioned). No doubt her great-grand-daughter Gertrude (Thomas) Paul, who was born in Kingston in 1835 and grew up in Jamaica, would have known her as their lives overlapped by nearly 20 years. Possibly Gertrude later spoke about “Grandmother Soley” to her own children, and she became a family legend for them.

In 1966 Fanny Paul, a daughter of Gertrude, whom I remember as my Grandmother's “Auntie Fanny”, mentioned in a letter to a nephew "My [Great] Great Grandmother lived to 104 on my Mother's side. She was in Jamaica & my Mother & family all lived out there, having gone there in their early years.". This comment is quite interesting, as Fanny herself also lived to 104 years (she died in 1978)

However, recent (2010) information about Grandmother Soley has come to light from a letter written in 1899 by her grandson Charles Poitiers Nosworthy to a great nephew in America, in which he says "Respecting our Ancestors, about two hundred years ago, my Grand Father was Collector of Customs in Jamaica, Mr Sowley. I did not know him, but my Grandmother died in Jamaica at the age of 92 and I knew her well. – She had two Daughters and a Son – the Son was never married... [One] daughter Susannah my Mother married Captain Richard Nosworthy of the 2nd West India Regiment, a native of Devonshire in England ..." Charles' idea of “about two hundred years ago” turned out to be rather an exaggeration, but luckily the mention of Mr. Sowley as Collector of Customs gave us another clue in finding the correct period for his time in Jamaica through records kept in the National Archives at Kew. These certainly placed him in the Caribbean in 1798.

The intriguing matter of Grandmother Soley's real age was (possibly) clinched in 2010 when one of her descendants, Katrina, found the record of her burial at St Andrew's Church, Kingston. "Burials in the Parish of St Andrew in the County of Surrey in the Year of our Lord 1854: Susan Sowley, 96 years, of Hagley Park, buried 29 January in the Church Yard." If correct, this would give her a birth year of 1758. [A note here – we later found many of the Nosworthy women very unreliable about their ages!!]

From the Register of Baptisms in Kingston for the year 1789 we find the following information: "Susanna Mary, the daughter of William Sowley & Susanna Elizabeth his wife, was born 8th Oct. 1788 & baptised 8th October 1789." [Susanna Mary is our ancestor, later Susan Nosworthy]

Apart from the three children mentioned by Charles Nosworthy, there was another child, Frances Sowley, who died as an infant in 1794. From the Royal Gazette, Aug 23, 1794, Kingston, Jamaica, West Indies : "DIED: Miss Frances Sowley, infant daughter of Mr. William Sowley." Notice the mothers of the babies didn't get a mention in those days.

Although we do not know Grandmother Sowley's family background, she may have come from a fairly wealthy and well established family in Jamaica, and she appears to have held land and slaves in her own name, independent of her husband. One of these properties was in the Parish of St Andrew, another in the Parish of Kingston. The details of these holdings can be found in the Slave Registers of former British Colonial Dependencies 1812-1834. Slavery was abolished in Jamaica in 1834 and there was an adjustment period of about 5 years after that before many slaves were finally freed.

For the period 1817-1822, Susan (Susan E./ Susanna/ Susanna E) Sowley was also a registered owner of land in the Parish of St Catherine, Jamaica. In 1822, she is mentioned as owning "Dowdal's Pen" of 460 acres which by 1824 had passed into the hands of Edward G Matthew. There were 6 slaves on Dowdal's in 1822. [Jamaican Almanacs].

Her husband, William Henry Sowley, Collector of Customs in Kingston, died probably 1827.

So there we have “Grandmother Soley, died aged 104” - really “Grandmother Sowley, died aged 96”. Not a huge difference but it was a long journey to find her. In the process we found hundreds of relatives for our Family Tree, many new and interesting facts of history, and new “cousins” who became new friends. Long may Grandmother Soley be remembered.